Comedy Show and Tell: the play-by-play

August 31, 2005

The first-ever Comedy Show & Tell this past Monday went fantastically, especially for being planned as an emergency measure to fill an empty spot at the bar. The idea has now graduated to full-time status and will take place every other Monday, alternating with the spelling bee.

Here is a picture of me this past Monday dressed like a seventies schoolteacher (vintage polyester!), in keeping with the show and tell theme:

Here’s how it went, as best I can remember:

  • My show and tell item was a copy of Marie Claire magazine, featuring an article entitled “These 25 Men Want to Marry You!” At least one doesn’t — I dated him, and happen to know that he’s busy using Nerve to set up threesomes (not with me). Go show and tell!
  • Comic Liz Miele (pictured at right) has “a great rack for a twelve-year old.” A very funny comic.
  • The cowboy did some show and tell of his broken collarbone and the fake cab information he received at the scene of the accident.
  • Dan Allen did a long show and tell of I don’t even remember what, but it was so long that by the time he started his set his time was nearly done, but he was very funny so I gave him another minute or two. He is also extremely tall.
  • Audience member Marc did some amazing show and tell — he brought a mounted and backlit taxidermied Chinese hairy fish. Really.
  • Shawn Hollenbach is a twin with a secret to tell. A fantastic set from this Mintyfresh producer.
  • Al Wagner showed his baby’s shrunken umbilical cord stump, in a jar, and did his set while we passed it around.
  • Megan showed us all a goofy sound-producing novelty item from her office, and Sarah showed us some rocks from the seashore, in true old-fashioned show and tell style.
  • Jesse Joyce commented that when most people say “gentleman,” they don’t really mean it. (“This gentleman is very upset that we have no vacancy, so he called me a vindictive whore, threatned to murder everyone in the building and then took a dump in the fountain.” Manager: “Which gentleman? The gentleman who is currently giving me the finger and pressing his cock against the glass doors?”)
  • Michelle Buteau (at right) showed up at the last minute and started shaking her booty at us early on into the set, which was a great start. Watch for her upcoming Premium Blend special on Comedy Central!

Whew! The next show will be Monday, September 12, 7:30, at Pete’s! Save the date, and bring something to show!

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snarky

August 31, 2005

So, I’m a member of this modeling website where wannabe-models often post questions like “I’m 5′2 and 35 years old — do you think I could do high-fashion in Europe?” This particular discussion was about models with tattoos. I wrote:

I have a tattoo on my stomach and up over my left breast that is a picture of the nation of Armenia, with depictions of victims of famine and genocide. Over the bellybutton is a replica of a Purple Heart medal. Also, I like when models are so thin you can see their spines, so I had the outlines of my vertebra tattooed over my real vertebra up and down my back.

I also have a glass eye, but it’s never been a problem — the glass eye always points in one direction, so I just make sure to look the same direction in the photos. If the photographer’s like “Look over here,” I say, “Dude, it’s the whole head or nothing. What, do you hate disabled people?”

Overall, girls, there really are a lot of models with tattoos, hunchbacks, major surgical scars, pattern baldness, dwarfism, and cerebral palsy. The only important thing is to FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS!

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those Japanese….

August 31, 2005

I used to joke to my SAT students that if they all studied enough and their scores went way up, I would win a free toaster from the company, and I really need one, because all my bread is cold and floppy.

Normally, the kids laugh, but in this case, at least one gullible student believed it, so I continued, explaining that the toaster actually branded the company logo into the bread, so the swoosh under the company name would hold lovely rivulets of butter.

Finally, less gullible students clued in the more gullible ones, and we all had a laugh. At the end of the class, one of the students drew me a picture (which all the other students signed) of such a toaster, with logo-branded toast popping out of it.

And now, months later, a student emailed me with this photo:

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cupcakes

August 31, 2005

Rachel Kramer Bussel runs an entire blog just about cupcakes. I haven’t had a cupcake in maybe a decade, so I stopped and got one to see what the fuss was about. It wasn’t really an erotic experience, but it was, in fact, strangely satisfying. I feel like I won’t need to eat for a day or two.

There’s something satisfying about a libertinous snack that still has built-in portion control. There’s a quantum of cupcake.

This particular cupcake, obtained from a nearby East Harlem bakery, was likely a half-day old, and its frosting had hardened a bit, as if cake had decided to wear a helmet.

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aw, nuts

August 30, 2005

Did you ever notice that when you eat almonds, the first few are so delicious, but then once you’ve eaten twenty, it’s like you’re eating trees? Your mouth gets dry and the little bits of almond skin stick to the roof of your mouth and then they’re not good at all anymore. It’s like you need to eat a stick of butter for lube.

Why are almonds so fucked up?

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Swanson, $1.89, freezer aisle

August 30, 2005

The cowboy, usually an excellent cook, especially of Asian cuisine, has had to rely on frozen dinners due to his broken collarbone.

Frozen dinners can seem enticing when you’re hungry, but then you sort of feel dirty after you’ve eaten. This is why bulimia exists. Sure, “French Women Don’t Get Fat,” but French women also don’t purge; it is morally wrong to throw up decent French cooking. It’s understandable to throw up a Hungry Man Meatloaf with Gravy Dinner.

This reminded me … as a teenager in Virginia I babysat for a family that had an enormous standalone freezer in their living room, stocked with at least a hundred individually-wrapped frozen hamburgers, hotdogs, and tacos. Each night they’d let their kids pick one item, they’d nuke it, and that was it.

People in bomb shelters eat better than that. U.N. gruel is more nutritious.

This family also had a neon Budweiser sign in their living room.

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update on the miraculous 24 hour comedy show

August 29, 2005

“24 hour” in the sense that that’s how long I had to produce it, not in the sense of “we will tell jokes in marathon fashion, the way people used to sit on flagpoles.”

The comics for tonight’s Comedy Show and Tell are:

  • Shawn Hollenbach (Mintyfresh)
  • Al Wagner (NY Comedy Club)
  • Liz Miele (Comic Strip, Carolines, featured in the New Yorker)
  • Michelle Buteau (Premium Blend)
  • Dan Allen (Premium Blend)
  • Jesse Joyce (Entertainment Tonight, NY Underground Comedy Festival)

(Shawn gets his picture up here because he was the first person to confirm, making him sparkly and joyful to me).

Thanks to the inimitable Baron Vaughn for his casting assistance!

For information on attending, scroll down four inches! Come see why a photo gallery of men from Marie Claire magazine is my show and tell item! See you in 4.5 hours!

Update: I am dressed like a schoolteacher, circa 1979! (Without perm or feathered hairstyle. But I am wearing polyester, and it is fabulous).

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Tonight in Brooklyn – Comedy Show & Tell

August 29, 2005

There’s a fantastic event tonight at Pete’s! Why didn’t I post about it earlier? Well, Pete’s Candy Store generally hosts a poetry series on alternate Mondays, but the poetry hosts cancelled at the last minute. So, I stepped in and, plagued with an excess of enthusiasm, I offered to produce a comedy show in under twenty-four hours. And it is no ordinary comedy show! I hope to see you there.

“Comedy Show & Tell” at Pete’s Candy Store

TONIGHT, Monday, August 29
Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer St. in Williamsburg
www.petescandystore.com
7:30-8:30pm
FREE

Comedy Show & Tell mixes performances by top young comedians with old-fashioned Show & Tell, just like back in grade school. Bring a favorite item with you to this free show — several audience members will be selected for show & tell!

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it takes a lot to thrill such a jaded person…

August 29, 2005

For one glorious span of wee-morning hours, my blog was ranked first:


(Check the actual box in the righthand sidebar to see current rank, most likely fallen from its former position of complete and total domination).

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"I can’t believe you old people these days, with your crazy prescription drugs and your pants all up to your ribs."

August 29, 2005

Today I attended a seminar on comedy roadwork (as in, how to get booked at the Chuckle Shack in Butte, Montana). One panelist mentioned that, along with booking firehouses (which actually sound like fun), he also has booked nursing home shows.

I generally imagine nursing home entertainers to be at least middle-aged, so as to have more in common with the audience, but, upon further reflection, I think many nursing home residents would be delighted to see some twentysomething comedians — it’s like having the grandkids come visit, except these ones are more interesting and better looking, and besides, the real ones never come visit anyway.

Better yet, I think perhaps the Jenny Vaudeville Show needs to make a nursing home appearance! I am certain that there’s some ninety-year old out there who is going to wet his damn slacks at the sight of chipper young people doing vaudeville.

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Come sit on my axis of evil, baby. Once we are lawfully wedded.

August 27, 2005

Just after posting Cintra Wilson’s comments about young Republicans (“prematurely wide and matronly young women with obsolete cheerleader features dressed like Lady Bird Johnson”), I discovered — via an ad on Ann Coulter’s website — republicanpeoplemeet.com, a dating service for Republicans.

Here is a quote from their “success stories”:

i found the most wondful person i could ever meet thank you

Philadelphia,PA

If only liberals could meet wondful people as well!

I can only imagine the profile questions:

Repealing estate taxes is sexy; war in Iraq is sexier.

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IQ TESTS are to INTELLIGENCE as the BBC is to UNBIASED NEWS REPORTING

August 27, 2005

I feel I must address this men are cleverer than women business, as reported by the BBC:

A study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology says that men are on average five points ahead on IQ tests.

…The study showed that, up to the age of 14, there was no difference between the IQs of boys and girls.

“But beyond that age and into adulthood there is a difference of five points, which is small but it can have important implications.”

When I first heard about this, I wrote the following reply (to my college alumni list):

The first IQ test, designed for French schoolchildren, was immediately redesigned when it gave erroneous results — the girls scored higher. After some adjustment, that was no longer the case, and the test was judged to be valid.

If you’ve seen an IQ test lately, you might have been expecting some magic diagnostic tool to actually tell you how smart people are — instead, it’s like an SAT with some spatial puzzles added. It is, quite frankly, pretty dumb looking.

It is not surprising to me that men perform better on a test designed by men, but that’s kind of a facile point. I think an even better one is that men’s and women’s brains are different, and — just taking into account the differences that are verifiable in neuroscience — I think it’s a quite reasonable hypothesis that some of the things men excel at are easier to test in standardized-test form.

For instance, I think one of the least controversial gender differences is that men have a better sense of direction (sure, some of that is from social conditioning and practice, but much of it is because men process directions in the hypothalamus, a “primitive” part of the brain that interprets directions literally — that is, electrical impulses within it actually work in a compass-like way, whereas women process directions in the cerebral cortex, along with everything else, which is why many women use landmarks and such to navigate).

Women, however, have a much better ability to read people’s body language. This is useful in “relationships,” yes, but also in diplomacy, corporate management, spying, etc.

Which is more valuable? Depends on what you’re doing. Which is easier to test? Probably spatial abilities. There do exist tests wherein the subject is asked to guess the moods of people pictured in photos, but that’s a poor substitute for real-life interaction (or at least video), and, more to the point, such a skill is not tested on an IQ test at all.

Originally, the IQ test was designed to test the potential of children, like a school-placement exam. It is unclear what value exists in giving the test to adults, whose “potential” is by and large already played out.

(Additionally, the test is enough like an SAT that I could teach nearly anyone to raise their ‘IQ’ by a substantial number of points. No magic there).

Amusingly, Feministing just made a quite similar point: “When I used to teach SAT classes for The Princeton Review, the biggest lesson was to make sure kids knew that the only thing the SAT measured was how well you took the SAT.” (I had no idea a popular feminist blogger was a former Princeton Review teacher).

However, Lakshmi Chaudhry of The L-Files has rather scooped the whole thing, pointing out that Richard Lynn, the “researcher” behind this whole “men are cleverer” thing, is a known eugenicist. You can follow the link if you want to read about “phasing out” cultures that are “incompetent.”

I’ll also add here: a male friend of mine suggested that men are “cleverer” for getting everyone to believe that men are cleverer for all these years. Cute.

A reader comment on the BBC site asked “Have these researchers looked at IQ levels below the average, at gender differentials among prison inmates?” The reader seems to be suggesting that, in contrast to the researchers’ claim that for every female genius, there are 5.5 male geniuses, that perhaps the dumbest men are dumber than the dumbest women — that is, that men are more widely spread out over the IQ spectrum, whereas women are clustered in a place of rarer brilliance but greater general competence. Interesting. (But again, I would apply all my previous arguments regarding the nature of the IQ test itself).

As a concluding thought, I’d like to note that when “The Bell Curve” came out, the book was roundly denounced as racist propaganda for suggesting that races differ in intelligence. However, when researchers report than men are smarter than women, the BBC reports it like it’s cute.

Aww, look at those little ladies trying to defend their intelligence — when all they have to do it with is … their intelligence! Whatsamatter, darlin’, can’t handle a little tautology?

Update: Apparently the BBC reported the exact opposite claim in December 2004.

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word of the day

August 27, 2005

Cintra Wilson in Salon again:

It seemed somehow related to the Roberts nomination that there was an extra helping of snappy young Republicans humming around the White House on the 20th — prematurely wide and matronly young women with obsolete cheerleader features dressed like Lady Bird Johnson, with tightly twisted hair and $2,000 handbags, and 20-something guys with that roundheaded military eunuch look: plastic wraparound sunglasses and boxy, off-the-rack navy-blue suits with the periwinkle-blue shirts that have become the uniform of the GOP Youth. The guys have a restless, jacked-up machismo that probably comes of venting the frustrations of abstinence in Krav Maga class, and a thumping sense of the authority and entitlement that comes with belonging to the winning team, which they call “The Party.” Superclean motherfuckers — an abrasive, stinging kind of clean, like they all just got shaken out of an icy tumbler full of Pine Sol, pumice and the New Testament.

This reminds me of a vocabulary lesson I taught a couple of weeks ago in which I explained the meaning of the word “excoriate” — one of those great words that’s usually used metaphorically, but has a literal meaning (like perhaps “lukewarm”). To “excoriate” someone is to criticize them harshly, but the literal meaning of the word is “to tear or wear off the skin of; abrade.” Like, when you drag someone behind your car in a lynching, or take a cheese grater to their skin. Excoriate.

Thank you, Cintra.

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the missing link

August 27, 2005

The cowboy is quite an expert on the nation of Laos, and yesterday he recounted a charming incident from a book he is reading. A Lao man came to America and was baffled by all the things he saw — buildings, highways, etc. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it — until someone took him on a trip to Colonial Williamsburg. He saw the iron plows and the wells and the farms, and suddenly, it all made sense; that’s how you get from there to here.

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"the press succumbed en masse to … the deranged, unconscious complicity that is found in victims of ritual abuse"

August 27, 2005

Hahahaha.

Cintra Wilson of Salon invaded the White House press corps and had this to say about the Orwellian newspeak proferred by White House press secretary Scott McClellan:

…it’s easy to sound smarter and more worthy of love than your adversary when you are using the spontaneous, active language centers of your brain to communicate, as opposed to being limited to doling out cold sound bites from an undersize professional memory thermos.

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